Monday 3 November 1997 10.11 EST
First published on Monday 3 November 1997 10.11 EST

As the trial begins today of the second man charged with the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 169 people in 1995, evidence is mounting that extreme rightwing militias targeted the city and the bombed federal building for years.

Documents and testimonies found by the Guardian and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis show that neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and Aryan supremacists declared their intention to launch a 'war' against the government in Oklahoma , under the nose of the FBI.

The trial of Terry Nichols, which follows the conviction of Timothy McVeigh, may throw light on the question left unsolved by McVeigh's silence: whether the attack on the Alfred Murrah building was the work of one man or was planned within the militia movement. Mr Nichols is accused of preparing the explosives used in the attack.

The discovery of previous threats challenges the central premise of FBI investigations: that the attack on April 19 1995 was timed to mark the anniversary of the Waco siege a year earlier. The militias wrongly believed that the siege was directed from Oklahoma , said the FBI.

However the militias were urged to 'stand up and fight' in Oklahoma as early as 1990, a document seen by the Guardian shows. It called the city a 'test case for the police state'. 'It is time to stand up with a weapon and scream: Enough! It is time to draw the line,' it said.

The document was reproduced in Behold a Pale Horse, a book published in 1991 by an ideologue of the militia movement, William Cooper. His book is the manifesto of the militia movement.

Mr Cooper, based in the paramilitary heartland of Arizona, refused to talk to the Guardian. He runs the 'Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence', refuses to carry a driving licence or pay taxes, and broadcasts a nightly shortwave radio programme. The McVeigh trial heard that in the months before the bombing McVeigh had been an avid listener.

On November 21 1994, a few months before the bombing, Mr Cooper issued a call to arms. Militias should be ready, he said, to 'fight a war' within six months. In October 1995, after the bomb, he told listeners: 'You're gonna need some bullets, you're gonna need guns.'

Mr Cooper's was not the only call to arms. Twelve years before the 1995 bombing, a group of neo-Nazis drew up plans to attack the Murrah building with rocket-launchers. One of them was Richard Wayne Snell, the first white man to be executed in Arkansas for murdering a black man.

As Snell was strapped down to be given a lethal injection, he told the governor of Arkansas: 'Look over your shoulder. Justice is coming.' Two hours after his death, the Oklahoma bomb went off.

Other evidence emerges from testimony to a federal prosecutor, Steve Snyder, by a militiaman and friend of Snell, James Ellison. Accused of racketeering, he turned state's evidence to testify against 14 other neo-Nazis charged with attempting to overthrow the government by force.

Mr Snyder told the Star Tribune that Mr Ellison had described meetings at a compound in Haydens Lake, Idaho, which had discussed blowing up federal buildings. Mr Ellison had been taken to the Murrah building and told to go inside and 'gauge what it would take to damage or destroy it'.

Mr Ellison had another direct link to Oklahoma . Again on April 19 - this time in 1985 - his armed compound in Arkansas was surrounded by 200 federal agents. A four-day siege ensued, and Mr Ellison was advised to surrender by a friend and a leader of the Oklahoma militia movement, Robert Millar.

Mr Millar runs an armed apocalyptic sect at a compound calling itself Elouhim City. A neo-Nazi turned government informant, Carol Howe, testified at a separate trial this summer that Mr Millar had urged followers, weeks before the Oklahoma bombing, to 'take whatever action necessary against the US government'.

They had discussed blowing up three federal buildings, among them the Murrah building.

Another reason for the militias' interest in Oklahoma is the National Prison Transfer Centre, based near the airport. This hub is portrayed by militias as a 'concentration camp' for true Christians resisting the New World Order of the Antichrist. Militias believe freemasons, occultists and 'secret power structures' are ready to impose a global regime.

Last year, a member of the Missouri 51st Militia, Larry Trincett, was tried for criminal use of explosives, and floor plans of the prison transfer centre were found at his home.

Survivors and bereaved of the Oklahoma bombing are petitioning for a grand jury to hear the argument that the authorities should widen their inquiries within the militia movement. One of the activists behind that petition, Tim Harding, has prepared tapes of broadcasts, including those by Mr Cooper.

'The more I heard,' said Mr Harding, 'the more it seems like these people are serious, and they have an unhealthy interest in Oklahoma .'